Circles
by Evil Asian Genius
Summary: Death and chance encounters. Nagare, Hisoka, Muraki, and Oriya.


Title: Circles

Summary: Death and chance encounters.  Nagare, Hisoka, Muraki, and Oriya.

Circles

            Stone steps and the _mon_ gate. 

            Muraki takes the first step.  One at a time, twenty-five in all.  Funny, he thinks to himself, that twenty-five steps, like the number of years in his life, draw him forward into adulthood.

            Five years ago, he had reached his majority and the family wealth held in trust for him passed into his hands.  Two years before that, he had met Oriya, who stands at his side today like a black-suited shadow.  Muraki wears white because it is appropriate; he is mourning.  Three after Oriya, he had met Ukyou.  

            "Oriya, I…"

            "Hmm?"  

            "I can't."  Muraki admits this to himself finally.  "I…"

            "You promised Ukyou."  Oriya continues walking up, without looking at Muraki.

            Muraki continues because he has to.  Five, six, seven …

***

            Eight, nine, ten.  Hisoka counts the statues of the ten kings within the sanctuary of the temple.

            "Father."  His voice is tiny, lost somewhere in the folds of incense coiling up to the spirit world.  "I'm scared."

            Nagare says nothing, but draws the boy close, his hand clutching the bony curve of the child's shoulder.  Nine years old, the family heir.  And here they come to absolve their sins.  To pray for the soul of that other Hisoka.  The family secret.  Over a decade later Nagare cannot put the memory of the girl out of his eyes, and that is all he can see in the spring-green eyes of his son.  

            "I don't like it here."  Hisoka's face looks pinched with pain and he shakes his head as if unable to jar a thought.  "I want to go."

            "No.  Be quiet."  Nagare snaps irritably.  He prays.  _Hisoka…my daughter.  Please forgive us, your parents…we never wanted this to happen…_

***

            "It didn't have to turn out this way."  Muraki stands in the courtyard of the temple, staring blindly at the winter-bared trees.  Snow dusts the cleared path, and ice limns the eaves.

            "Muraki…"  Oriya's voice hints at warning.

            "I could have…if I had come home just a few hours earlier, instead of…"

            "Muraki."  Oriya's voice is sharp.  "Stop this.  There was nothing you could have done.  You know this."

            "I'm a doctor."  Anguish.

            "And as a doctor, you should know that this sort of thing happens," Oriya says.  "It was beyond your control."

            "I know, but…it…he..."  Muraki stops there, unable to speak.

            Oriya's tone softens.  "That's why we're here."  He leads Muraki by the elbow deeper into the temple grounds.  "For Ukyou, to pray for the sake of the lost child."

            Muraki is not superstitious.  Yet the thought of his child, the miscarriage, a fetus writhing its way through the passage into the ten hells, piling stones with tiny malformed hands before the river of judgment to cross it…it bothers him in ways he never realized could hurt before.

            "Of course."  Muraki blinks back hot tears and walks forward.

***

            Nagare kneels down beside his son, wiping away Hisoka's tears with the edge of a trailing sleeve.  "You're too old to cry."

            "But it hurts."  Hisoka babbles like an infant.  "It hurts…"  He pulls away from his father's touch and breaks into a run.  That underlying fear in his eyes, the revulsion as Nagare touches him…

            Nagare knows that the gods have turned their backs on him.  For the curse that fell upon the family centuries ago, he is ravaged.  For the crime that he could not prevent, he is given penance; a child that does not love him and cannot bear the touch of his hand.  

            "Hisoka!"  Nagare's voice is a sharp whisper, disturbing the mourners around him.  The edge of his mouth twists as his son runs away from him and into the arms of a stranger.

***

            Oriya stops in his tracks when a boy runs into him. 

            "There now…"  He catches the slender shoulders.  Tear-stained cheeks, green eyes, and looking into them he feels as though he's falling into a well of clear water.

            The image recedes.  Muraki looks at them oddly, lost in his thoughts.

            Thin fingers pale and they clutch his coat as if Oriya can prevent the boy from drowning.

            Oriya gently untangles the boy's hands from his coat.  "Your parents are waiting for you," he says.  

            "But they hurt.  Everyone hurts.  You don't."  

            Oriya smoothes his wheat-blonde hair.  "You…"  

            "Hisoka."  Nagare walks over and pulls him off Oriya.  "Please excuse my son."

            "It's…" Oriya turns to see the father.  Something's awry; the man reeks of a wrongness that only grows as he nears.  Imbalance, a broken vessel, and dead eyes stare at him from underwater like the progression of corpses along a mortuary wall.

            Oriya nearly chokes on the words.  He's never gotten a reaction this strong, not even from Muraki.

            "It's all right."  Muraki fills the words in for him, recognizing his hesitation.  

            Hisoka looks desperate and writhes, trying to get away from his father's touch.

***

            The smoke of the incense squirms in the air as they walk into the sanctuary.  Muraki stares at the boy, eyes hinting at predation.  That glow of purity about the boy, the sensation of spiritual power just beneath the surface of his skin and it makes him want…

            Muraki doesn't know whether or not he wants to preserve that clarity of spirit or destroy it.  But he continues to stare because through a perverse joke of nature, the boy looks as he did when he was a child.  And his son, a ragged mess of unborn flesh and blood.  Memory and reality twist together in a mocking parody that plays out before his eyes and Muraki is convinced that somewhere, someone is laughing at him.

            "Hisoka, apologize."  

            Hisoka shakes his head in negation wildly as he tries to pull away.  "Nnn…" It's not the answer that Nagare was looking for, but at the same time, Hisoka isn't responding to Nagare's command.

            But by now, Oriya has recovered.  He lays a gentling hand on the boy's shoulder, and immediately he calms down, even though he quivers like the taut string of a bow.

            "I don't mind.  A place like this is difficult enough for an adult, much less a child," Oriya says smoothly.  

***

            "Yes…difficult."  Nagare lets Hisoka go.  

            Hisoka looks even more relieved, tense but no longer crying.  It hadn't been this way when he was an infant, had it?  The child had been sensitive, but with some coaxing, could be courted into a smile.  But by the time he could walk, he would scream and wail if Nagare even so much as touched him. 

            Time has turned the boy sullen, and the rift is irrevocable.  Nagare can only helplessly plea to the gods for a forgiveness that he will never know.

             "Please forgive me, sir."  Hisoka has found his voice again.  Charmingly polite at turns, a veritable demon at others.  Nagare's lips are drawn tight.

            Oriya leans his tall frame down, half-kneeling to look Hisoka in the eyes.  His hand rests upon the boy's shoulder. 

            "It is right of you to be afraid, because this place deals with the world of the dead.  But you must remember who you are, and comport yourself properly."  The words are politely formal and the sentiment correct, but Oriya's dark eyes seem to be telling the boy something else.

            A secret.  A twinge of jealousy climbs along Nagare's spine and into his eyes.  It will always be like this.  Nagare realizes that for the duration of his earthly days, Hisoka will never turn to his father for comfort, for love.  Strangers would be infinitely preferable to this, the snake-cursed man that gave him life.  The thought leaves a sick taste in his mouth and a cold shiver that passes into his toes.

            Oriya unfolds his height, standing up.  Face-to-face, the man's green eyes stare at him with unspoken emotion.

            "Mibu Oriya."  He reaches out to shake the man's hand, ignoring what his spiritual senses are doing to him as they touch.  "And you…?"

***

            Muraki cannot stop looking at the boy.  Reddened eyes, a dried track of a tear along a peach-perfect cheek, and the sight mocks him.  Had his son lived, perhaps in nine years he would have looked like this, albeit with his mother's dark eyes and his father's pale hair.  The fetus had wisps of fine white-blonde hair.  Its eyes were inhuman, not yet a person's, but brown, like Ukyou's.  He had held it in his hands as it struggled for a breath that never came, its flesh hot and sticky with blood.  It would have never lived, but it tried.  The hands were tiny and the whole of the body was blue and…and…  

            As Oriya and Nagare talk, exchanging formalities as is wont, he stands silently, watching the boy whose eyes turn to him in horror as if the child can see what is inside of Muraki's head.

            He shyly ducks behind his father, careful not to touch him, but putting the man between him and Muraki.

            Muraki turns his attention elsewhere.  

            A priest catches his eyes and directs him away from the others.  He darts a glance back at the boy as he walks away.

            Hisoka stares at him levelly with glass-green eyes.  

***

            They are the same, father and son.  Family name, Kurosaki, Oriya notes, and in essence the child is a replica of his father down to the green eyes, though the elder has long trailing hair drawn back severely in the style of a samurai.  

            In a way, Oriya feels as though they have an understanding.  His own hair falls like a banner along his back, pulled back from his face.

            "A pleasure, Kurosaki-san."  Oriya's eyes follow Muraki for a moment, making sure that all's well.  He looks away as, in the distance the priest hands Muraki unlit sticks of incense, the fragile joss sticks swaying and vibrating with shock of transferal.

            "My son, Hisoka."  

            "How do you do."  The words come mechanically, but Hisoka is not looking at him.  Oriya follows the path of his gaze to see Muraki at the end of it, the incense now lit, little dots of glowing orange dancing in the dim light of the temple.

            "My son is very sensitive," Nagare says, by way of explanation.  

            "No need to apologize."  Oriya waves it off.  "I was like that as a child myself.  The rites of the dead frightened me badly."

            Nagare nods, a meaningless movement of the head.  Not the curse, not the secret, not the child.  Something about the tranquility and understanding of this stranger wants him to open up his pain, but he forces the thoughts aside.  "It is hard on all of us," he finally says, a compromise.

            "Indeed."  Oriya's gaze flicks to Muraki, who stands trembling before the altar, the joss sticks shaking in his hands.  "Please excuse me."

            Nagare understands this.  Gently, without touching Hisoka, he leads him outside.

***

            "Muraki."  Oriya says his name gently, and Muraki startles, nearly dropping the joss sticks.

            "It won't do to drop them," Oriya says, his hand moving up swiftly to clasp Muraki's, so that the incense does not fall out of Muraki's slack grasp.  "Pray, and we'll leave.  I will pray as well."  He motions for the priest, who brings him three unlit sticks.

            "Hold them still; I'll light mine from yours."  Oriya's voice is soothing and the little ritual of lighting the incense, pressing an unlit stick to a glowing tip until it smolders black and turns into an orange-red ember seems to calm Muraki down.

            Oriya and Muraki turn to face the altar of Enma, before which stands a bronze cauldron filled with sand and ash, hundreds of sticks of incense burning at various heights, from the remnant sticks to freshly glowing embers swaying gently as a winter breeze slips in from outside.  The smoke of the incense is almost unbearable, a sickly sweet smell of sandalwood and fragrant oils.

            "Pray for his soul."  Oriya closes his eyes, the offering fragile in his hands.

***

            A soul that weeps and pines for its mother.  Muraki's stomach turns at the image in his head.  Suffering that he cannot hope to prevent, suffering from which he cannot hope to give succor.  Would that he had never even been born, Muraki thinks, that that fetus had never even known the spark of fertilization.

            All before him is death.  Muraki nearly drops the incense again at the epiphany that there would never be more to this life than suffering.  There would never be more to this life than loss.  Oriya was right; it was out of his control.

            And then, that mad thought.  What if he could control it?

            Muraki almost laughs, a weak and broken sound that Oriya thinks is a sob.  

            They both place their incense in the urn and add their offerings to those of the others.  Offerings to the king of the underworld for the souls of the children who had died before they ever lived.

            The two men bow reverently, and leave.

***

            Outside it's snowing again.  Hisoka looks up into the dizzying fall, and a tiny snowflake lands on his right eye.  Vision blurred, he looks away and rubs at his eye, the tiny prick of ice disappearing into memory as he does so.

            His father stands among the ice and Hisoka shivers, thinking of that man's hands on him.  Even the slightest touch shows him things that he never wants to see, the slithering coil of a serpent's tail, the unyielding eyes of the ancestors.

            "Are you cold?"  Nagare notices the shiver.

            "Mmm."  Hisoka is afraid that Nagare will touch him again.

            Before Hisoka can protest, Nagare whisks off his unfastened overcoat and settles the heavy fabric around Hisoka's shoulders.  Kneeling in the falling snow, he begins fastening the traditional coat around Hisoka, tying it together so that it won't slide off of the boy's small frame.  Hisoka puts his arms into the sleeves, which are far too long for him.  They hang off of him like an ancient courtier's robe, two trailing streams of dark cloth that nearly touch the snowy ground.

            It leaves Nagare vulnerable to the winter's chill, his clothes ill suited for the outdoors.

            "But you're cold, father."  Hisoka raises a falling sleeve and almost, almost touches Nagare's hand as he finishes fastening the coat.

            Nagare stares at him, and his lips move into a little smile.  The severity of his face smoothes out for a moment, a brief interlude hidden in the falling snow.  "Your mother would never forgive me if you caught cold."

            "I'm sorry I was bad."  Hisoka fingers the coat's lining from within.  It smells like Nagare, masculine with a faint whiff of medicinal bitterness.  

            "You did as well as you could."  Nagare yearns to enfold his child in his arms.  The only child that remains to him.  But he doesn't move, because movement would break the spell.

            "Will we come back next year?"  Hisoka asks.

            "Yes."  Nagare stands up.  Next year, and the next, and the next.  Because he could never know for certain if his little Hisoka, the girl with green eyes and honey-wheat hair that curled just a little at the edges, had crossed that river into the next life.

            Because at night he is certain that her soul follows him around like a lost puppy, crawling along the floor trailing blood, sobbing because he cannot hold her with his hands ever again.  That Kasane's soul follows him as well, her eyes reproachful as he takes her sister into his bed, their identical gasps of pleasure condemning him to hell forever.  The dead stare at him from just beyond his shoulder, waiting for him to join them.

            "Let's go home."  Nagare walks away as hungry ghosts nibble at the edges of his shadow, starving for his love.

***

            "I love her.  Ukyou.  But I did this to her."  Muraki sits on a stone bench outside, snow melting into his clothes.  The damp pain makes him feel real.  His hands, surgeon's hands that never flinch, are shaking.

            "No.  It was meant to happen.  The child couldn't have lived.  You know that."  Oriya's arm is around Muraki.  Would that he could draw the pain from his friend's heart – it is too cruel.  Parents, brother, child…it is as though fate contrives to bring the man suffering.  

            "She's so sick."  Muraki says blankly, staring at the falling snow.  It dusts his hair and coat but it's hard to tell because Muraki is so white himself.  Oriya feels as though he needs to get Muraki away from here before he too disappears into the engulfing whiteness.  "I don't know what I can do for her.  What if she doesn't get better?"

            "The doctors are doing their best."  Oriya pulls Muraki into a standing position, trying to remove him from this world of ghosts and shadows hidden in the expressionless snow.

            "All but me."  Muraki says, his breath coming out in a white cloud.  The white sleeves of his clothes.  The white fall of the snow.  He feels like he's disappearing.

            Oriya tries to draw him away, but he doesn't move.  

            Muraki looks up into the swirling white storm.  A snowflake falls into his right eye and he doesn't even blink.

End

Author's notes: This one is for Aeanagwen.  She wanted something with Nagare, Muraki, and Oriya and this came out of it.  The temple actually exists in Kamakura, and is called Ennoji temple.  On January 16, people come here to pray to Enma to ease the way of wandering souls.  People also come to pray for babies and children who have died, believing that their prayers will ease the way for the souls across a river of judgment. Descriptions can be found here: www.asahi-net.or.jp/~QM9T-KNDU/ennoji.htm

As an added bit of trivia, Sagano in Kyoto where Oriya and Muraki meet for the last time is also a shrine of this nature, partially dedicated to the same Buddhist deity that helps the souls of the babies across the river.  More can be found here: web.kyoto-inet.or.jp/people/noriko/english/e_rakusai9.html

Thanks to RubyD for answering questions about Nagare, and Aeanagwen for prereading and proofreading.


End file.
